Pimlico is demarcated to the north by Victoria Station, by the River Thames to the south, Vauxhall Bridge Road to the east and the former Grosvenor Canal to the west.

At its heart is a grid of residential streets laid down by the planner Thomas Cubitt, beginning in 1825 and now protected as the Pimlico Conservation Area.

At some point in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, the area ceased to be known as Ebury or "The Five Fields" and gained the name by which it is now known.

While its origins are disputed, it is "clearly of foreign derivation.... [William] Gifford, in a note in his edition of Ben Jonson, tells us that 'Pimlico is sometimes spoken of as a person, and may not improbably have been the master of a house once famous for ale of a particular description'.

Lupus Street contained similarly grand houses, as well as shops and, until the early twentieth century, a hospital for women and children.

"[5] Although the area was dominated by the well-to-do middle and upper-middle classes as late as Booth's 1889 Map of London Poverty,[6] parts of Pimlico are said to have declined significantly by the 1890s.

[8] Through the late nineteenth century, Pimlico saw the construction of several Peabody Estates, charitable housing projects designed to provide affordable, quality homes.

Prior to 1928, the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress shared offices at 33 Eccleston Square, and it was here in 1926 that the general strike was organised.

In the mid-1930s Pimlico saw a second wave of development with the construction of Dolphin Square, a self-contained "city" of 1,250 up-market flats built on the site formerly occupied by Cubitt's building works.

[citation needed] Pimlico survived the war with its essential character intact, although parts sustained significant bomb damage.

The PDHU once relied on waste heat from the now-disused Battersea Power Station on the south side of the River Thames.

Brian Alexander's friend, Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, owner of Mustique island in the Caribbean was friends with Henry Cubitt, Baron Ashcombe the chairman of the builders, Holland, Hannen and Cubbits who developed the estate comprising 480 homes in the 19th Century and were major shareholders in partnership with Harry Reynolds of Reynolds Engineering of then owners CR Developments.

Brian Alexander after leaving Previews International, eventually became MD of the Mustique Company for many decades..[10] Pimlico was connected to the London Underground in 1972 as a late addition to the Victoria line.

Successive waves of development have given Pimlico an interesting social mix, combining exclusive restaurants and residences with Westminster City Council-run facilities.

It was developed between 1946 and 1962 to a design by the architects Powell and Moya, replacing docks, industrial works, and several Cubitt terraces damaged in the Blitz.

On Buckingham Palace Road is the former "Empire Terminal" of Imperial Airways, a striking Art Moderne building designed in 1938 by architect Albert Lakeman.

They live in 'carcasses', part-built houses on which work has ceased owing to the drying-up of funds, due in turn to an involved conspiracy central to the book's convoluted plot.

These all form part of the Cities of London and Westminster parliamentary constituency, currently represented by MP Nickie Aiken, a Conservative.